BizLaunch: Celebrating 10 Golden Years of Entrepreneurship in Arlington
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Osiris Hoil of District Taco and County Representatives Present at the BizLaunch Mobile Food Carts
Workshop on April 2012 |
There is no better way to celebrate National Small Business Month (May) than by highlighting the success of BizLaunch’s now 10-year old program. In 2002, BizLaunch kicked off its program with the modest goals of assisting and educating Arlington’s entrepreneurs with its four pillars of entrepreneurship success: access to information, education, research and counseling. At the time, BizLaunch worked closely with its steadfast partners the Arlington Public Library, the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to coordinate and conduct its outreach efforts.
In time, and as the strategic goals of BizLaunch grew, so did its impact on local area small businesses and the number of accolades BizLaunch received from around the small business community.
During the 2002 fiscal year when BizLaunch first started there were five basic entrepreneurial workshops conducted with 222 participants and 61 one-on-one consultations. Today, during fiscal year 2012 there were 44 workshops with over 2,217 participants and over 600 one-on-one consultations.
During the past ten years, BizLaunch has successfully outreached to over 20,000 entrepreneurs through its conferences, workshops, seminars, networking opportunities and counseling sessions.
As the demand for BizLaunch grew, the number of partners increased to accommodate the number of entrepreneurs seeking assistance. SCORE is a tremendous BizLaunch partner, offering quality business counseling sessions from two local successful entrepreneurs: Joe Clarke and Gerry Sanz who combined, volunteer 1,200 + hours of their time annually.
The Latino Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) offers a weekly financial counselor, Pamela Cañas in BizLaunch to work with entrepreneurs to help them improve their credit score as well as to apply for low-interest small business loans.
BizLaunch looks forward to another successful ten years assisting the small business community in Arlington through its highly valued programs. If you are interested in starting, growing or expanding your business in Arlington or surrounding region, contact BizLaunch today at 703-228-0808. Follow BizLaunch on Twitter and Facebook.
